Kemp’s Creative Happiness Blog

One major source of happiness for me personally is to have choices and live autonomously. Easy enough – or is it really? Not if you rely solely on news presented by mainstream media to supply you with views of the world and the state of society. It actually takes quite an effort to make up your mind and to choose sources of information that are not biased and paid for by advertisers with their own agendas.

The film is full of valid comments by Chomsky on issues such as media analysis, control of public opinion and free speech. Here are a two of my favourites:

I’m helping people develop intellectual self-defense… I don’t mean go to school, because you’re not going to get it there… It means that you have to develop an independent mind, and work on it. That’s extremely hard to do alone… The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube. It’s very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can’t fight the world alone. Some people can, but it’s pretty rare. The way to do it is through organization.

The point is that you have to work. And that’s why the propaganda system is so successful. Very few people are going to have the time or the energy or the commitment to carry out the constant battle that’s required to get outside of Lehrer, or Dan Rather, or somebody like that. The easy thing to do, you know, you come home from work, you’re tired, you had a busy day, you’re not going to spend the evening carrying out a research project. So you turn on the tube, you say it’s probably right, or you look at the headlines in the paper, and then you’re watching sports or something. That’s basically the way the system of indoctrination works. Sure the other stuff is there, but you’re going to work to find it.

The movie was made in 1992 and newer versions also include an interview with Chomsky as a special feature with his reaction to the movie and it’s imapct on public perception ten years later.

Check wikipedia for more information about the movie and Noam Chomsky.

Also read:

HOW TO DETECT BIAS IN NEWS MEDIA

DID YOU EVER HAVE A JOB AS A BATTERY CHICKEN?

8 STEPS TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSUASIVE SKILLS

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